


Of Lemon Cakes and Silk

by Sugar_Scythe



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: But they're all Connected, Canon Compliant, F/M, Pre-Relationship, Sort-of Drabbles, sansan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-11-13 11:10:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18030608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sugar_Scythe/pseuds/Sugar_Scythe
Summary: Sansa ran her fingers down the length of her nicest silk dress; Septa Mordane had said the blue complimented her Tully hair. She sighed and hoped the woman was right, Sansa wanted to impress her betrothed after all.~-~-~-~Joffrey screamed loud with rage. His voice cracked and seemed to whistle as he lunged for Arya. Sansa stood trembling and uncertain and afraid, crying out for it all to stop. She knew it would not. Her prince--her handsome, gallant prince-- was charging her foolish sister, glazed eyes alight with murderous intent. Sansa felt her heart stutter in her chest and gasped. All she could see at that moment was the red of blood and gleaming steel as it caught the sun. She sobbed again, but she was relieved.





	1. Lemon Cakes

**Author's Note:**

> Reads kinda vague because I lean on the book and show a lot, but this was written as a sort of experiment for me. Hope you like it at any rate!

Sansa Stark stood among the crowd wondering how everything had gone so wrong. She had been admiring the knights one moment, and now she was cowering beneath the gaze of what had to be a monster. Her fingers tightened in Lady's fur, and she stepped backwards. Large hands steadied her and she turned her frightened gaze to the face of the Hound. Her heart was beating so hard it made her ears ring, but she could still make out his self-deprecating jibe in response to her fear. 

He was asking if she was afraid of him. Sansa supposed she was, she had been when she first met him. Now though, her fear had turned. She had looked upon his fiery face and felt a superficial, naive aversion. But now she was filled with terror, and it was not because of him. She stumbled from his grip and he was called away. Sansa longed for the lemon cakes and sweet conversations she might have shared with the Princess Myrcella in her litter. How had it gone so wrong?

Ilyn Payne had frightened her beyond anything she had ever known. But he was not long to be outdone.


	2. Fear

It was supposed to be a nice day. She was just to for a pleasing stroll with her prince while their precession had stopped. She hadn't expected to run into her sister fooling about with the butcher's boy and playing at swords. She hadn't expected things to turn so sour and twisted.

Joffrey screamed loud with rage. His voice cracked and seemed to whistle as he lunged for Arya. Sansa stood trembling and uncertain and afraid, crying out for it all to stop. She knew it would not. Her prince--her handsome, gallant prince-- was charging her foolish sister, glazed eyes alight with murderous intent. Sansa felt her heart stutter in her chest and gasped. All she could see at that moment was the red of blood and gleaming steel as it caught the sun. She sobbed again, but this time in relief.

Her sister stood mostly unharmed, and the boy-turned-monster lay cursing and wailing at her feet. His sword now lay at the bottom of a river. Joffrey shrieked and swore at Arya and her wolf for maiming him while blood pooled beneath his wounded arm. Sansa should run to her prince she knew, but she was too focused on Arya's well-being to do anything more than bid her sister to run with her eyes. Arya turned tail and ran after the butcher's boy and her wolf.

Later that night, Sansa curled up tight beneath the covers of her borrowed bed and thought about what had happened. When she had gone to the prince after Arya's disappearance, he had yelled at her to get away. She had seen nothing but hate in his blue eyes and knew it was not just due to the pain. Sansa shut her eyes tight against the sting of tears and wondered when they would send for her. She had hoped briefly after her father had questioned her that she would not be expected to speak in front of the royal family. Even as she thought it she knew what a stupid hope it was. Arya's wolf had bitten Joffrey and the both of them had fled after. Sansa remained the sole witness. So she waited and prayed and tried not to cry.


	3. Lady

Lady was dead.

The Queen called for a mock-hearing of sorts. She demanded payment for Joffrey's arm.  
Nymeria was nowhere to be found, and Arya couldn't be of any help. And so they the Queen, in all her beautiful anger, asked after Lady.

Her precious Lady was dead and it was all stupid Arya's fault! Her stupid, stupid sister and stupid Nymeria were the ones who should be punished, not sweet good Lady. Sansa sobbed against her pillow until she could sob no more. It seemed the whole day had been spent on her crying. Sansa wondered if she would ever shed a tear again.

She did not sleep a wink that night. And when Sansa rose in the morning, it was to the cold, hard truth that her lady was well and truly gone. 

Her father had not gone back on his word.


	4. Traitor

Sansa Stark wasn't quite sure anymore how long they had been at the Red Keep, but surely it had been long enough. She didn't truly wish to leave, Joffrey was just overwhelmed, and everyone was confused. They didn't hate her. But Queen Cersei had been asking her so many questions she didn't quite know how to answer, and they seemed to suspect her father of some great sin.

Eddard Stark was a good and honourable man and a great father, and he never killed King Robert. They were the best of friends and loved one another like brothers. Sansa knew they would pardon him of whatever accusations were put against him. Joffrey had promised to be merciful after all.

\-----------------

The new king was a liar.

There was never meant to be any mercy for her father.

And Sansa knew these people she had once thought to love, were never going to be her friends.

Joffrey, King Joffrey, as he always insisted, was now leading her out to the Traitor's Walk. He had something to show her, he said. 

Sansa Stark had never hated anything so fiercely in her entire life as she hated the boy king at that moment. She thought to jump, it would be so easy, and remove the image of her father's decapitated head from her mind. She thought how simple it would be to pull the King down along with her. A strong hand and a gruff voice halted her, shaking her from her pitiful fantasies. The Hound offered her a handkerchief and she remembered herself. She couldn't do such a thing. So she settled for hating Joffrey and his beautiful mother and all their cruel pets instead. 

The Hound had been right to call her a little bird for that is what she was. And this castle was her cage.


	5. Silk

Everything was happening so fast. 

They were beating her, she could feel the cold sting of their swords laying flat against her thighs as they hit her. She could feel her blood leaving her body.

They were stripping her, Joffrey's false knights. She tried to grasp the shredded silk--it had been her prettiest gown-- she had put on in an attempt to appease the king, but it was for nought. Her king was laughing and sneering at her, and she could hardly think past the bloody pain and shrewd humiliation of her nakedness in front of his court.

Her saving grace came in the form of the Imp. Tyrion marched in and shouted at the king and his guards and ordered their treatment of her to stop. He had never seemed so tall as he did at that moment.

The next thing she knew the Hound was laying his heavy cloak over her shoulders with that uncharacteristic gentleness he was always showing her. Sansa gripped it tight to her. Its rough knit scratchy against her skin but soft as a dove to her aching heart. Tears blinded her, and she couldn't hear what was said past the sound of her heart pulsing loud against her ear, but she knew to be grateful to her unlikely saviours.

She let the queen's brother lead her away, and she couldn't help but turn back to the scene she was leaving. Joffrey stood looking angry and surprised, and the courts were abuzz with whispers and gossip. Sansa found her watery gaze landing on the Hound. She knew, no matter how he denied it, while King's Landing had been taken over by frauds and monsters, there was at least one true knight still standing. He caught her gaze with his own harsh one. All dark eyes and twisted flesh, and she was no longer afraid of him. Sansa bid him thanks through her eyes and turned back to follow Tyrion and his brutish guard. 

She wanted her mother and sister and brothers and father, but mostly she wanted to sleep.


	6. Torn

The mob was swallowing them whole.

Men and women were pulled from their horses and Sansa could see a body being trampled already beneath their steeds' frantic hooves. Was his a familiar face? Was is a kindly face or a cruel one? Or was it that of one of their pursuers, lost to his own feverous cause. 

A pile of dung flew past her in the air. A woman screamed and cried from a ways away. The voice was shrill and sobbing, and she knew this one to be that of the soft Lady Lollys. Sansa gasped as her horse veered to the side. And suddenly she was being grabbed. What seemed a dozen dirty mean hands ascended upon her, grasping, tearing, hurting her. She had but a moment to cry out as she was dragged into the street by a swarm of angry men. Their faces, uncaring of who they hurt in their rage. Sansa could see the intent in their eyes when they ripped at her dress. Tearing the silk and gazing with angry heated eyes at the stretch of pale leg revealed to them.

Sansa gasped and squirmed to get away yelling and pleading with them to stop, that she was not the one to hurt them, but it was all for nought. No matter her struggles these men were persistent. She would be taken here. In the dirt amongst all this chaos. They would tear her apart and ruin her.

In a flash of movement, the men were being pulled off her. A horse whinnied loudly and she could hear a man, not part of the group that surrounded her, grunting and yelling in a terrible rasping voice. Blood spattered onto her dress and she glimpsed a streak of shiny steel that glinted red where it arced through the air where one of the assailant's heads used to be. The Hound stood before her in all his fearsome might. Cleaving men in two and sliding the end of is blade through their backs and out their stomachs. When the bloodshed was done, he grasped her easily by arm and swung her onto his horse behind him. The Hound pressed his cloak to her once again before leading them out of the fray and towards safety. 

Sansa could think of nought for a long while after but for the strength of his arms when he picked her up off the ground and his warmth when she held onto him on the ride back to the Keep.


	7. The Hound

Sandor Clegane stared down at the frightened girl in front of him, squinting at her through the eye not surrounded by twisted scars. The little Sansa seemed like a hare caught in the presence of a hungry wolf with the way she had taken in Iilyn Payne's presence in the road. Sandor mocked her, turning her thoughts away with claims of her fear of himself. 

He watched her go. Joffrey tugged her along by the arm with a falsely gentle grin and a haughty air. And Sandor wondered how long the little bird would be fooled by his act.

\------------------

Sandor wasn't present when the Queen ordered to have the girl's wolf killed. He wasn't around to see her pretty little face crumple up in tears, or to hear her beg for mercy. Instead, he was running down some poor fool of a boy for playing at swords with a girl who was truly more a wolf than a girl. 

He thought about the look on Joff's face when the wolf-girl struck him and focused on that while he washed away the blood on his hands.


	8. Caged

The little bird continued her chirping, day after day. All pleasant courtesies and niceties, ever polite and never anything but ladylike. She almost passed off as content, caged as she was. Even after Joffrey's sick power play of showing off her father's head. Sansa Stark never faltered. The Hound was almost proud.

He had been contemplating such things when the little Lady was called into court. Joffrey was looking nought a sight more than a toddler at his name day when Sansa walked in. She stood tall and poised, ready for whatever humiliation he would deal her for the day.

Sandor hadn't expected a public beating.

And he hadn't expected for the boy to go so far as to strip her either.

Needless to say, it was a relief when the Imp marched through to whisk her away. And Sandor took no time to cast his cloak over her. Though he might despise himself for it, he was ashamed and almost envious that the crooked little dwarf was more capable of protecting the little bird then he was.


	9. Bread

The riot awaiting the royal procession following Myrcella's departure for Dorne was hardly surprising. Perhaps not expected, but an uprising was unavoidable what with Joffrey's miserable attempt at ruling a country. 

The Hound yanked on the reigns of his horse, pulling back from a swarm of men and women charging at the group. He saw the High Priest go down somewhere ahead of him. And he could hear the cries of nobles and civilians all around. He wasn't looking for any of those snot-nosed courtly types though. His attention was elsewhere. 

Sandor almost missed the spot of red betwixt the dirt and brick and dust in the air, but he caught it still as a true hound caught a scent. It seemed an eternity before he reached them. His sword swinging left and right to knock down any person in his way. The Hound reached Sansa as she was sprawled on the ground, clearly at the terrible mercy of the men who had pulled her from her own horse.

The Hound took no time making quick work of the would-be rapists and tugged the pale, fearful girl into the saddle behind him. Sandor paid no mind to her immodesty and passed her his cloak.


End file.
